How Hotels can use FaceBook to maximum effect

Although its rather unfashionable of us to say this, AccuBook sits on the somewhat sceptical side of Social Media for Hotels.

Yes you need to keep updated key Social media accounts, but we have rarely seen results that match the effort needed in this area........with one possible exception; FaceBook.

Hardly a day goes by without one of our hotels saying to us..'I wish i could get a database of customers interested in Golf/Walking/Cycling/Spa's etc etc, but i just cant get my hands on one'. But FaceBook have made this possible.

Many hotels wrongly assume that FaceBook is all about building a page with as many 'Likes' as possible, and posting updates that reach out to the people who 'Like' their page, with the result that 'size' becomes all important. 'I have 2000 Likes' 'i have 8000 Likes' on my FaceBook Page etc etc.

The quantity of people who like your page has no impact on your ability to use FaceBook to reach out to a particular market sector. Even if your page has only 25 likes, you can still use the Advertising Features on FaceBook to push a particular message in front of a particuar audience.

Lets take a real life example;
www.broadhavenbay.com based in County Mayo Ireland wanted to market their facilities to outdoor types to exploit the beauty of the scenery and countryside they have on their doorstep. They created guided walk packages on specific weekends and set them up in their Booking Engine. However, its one thing having the product but how do you let guests who may be interested in walking know about it if you dont have a database of walkers? The answer of course was FaceBook.

So the Offer was posted onto their FaceBook Page as a Status Update, and then the Post was 'Boosted'.

	This involved selecting; A Budget - ie 10$ Per Day for 7 Days, Total 70$ A Region - ie Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, A Demographic - ie People aged between 25 and 65, Male and Female. People with specific interests ie Outdoor recreation, Walking, hill walking, Mountaineering or hiking.
	What about the results? The Ad was then 'Boosted' or put in front of a total of 18403 People over the 7 days, resulting in 1096 people clicking on the ad. A further 531 then drilled down further and clicked on to the page on the website with special the offer displayed. 80 people liked the post. 12 people liked the page.

All in all, we cannot think of another simple cost effective method like FaceBook that allows hotel to carry out such targeted Marketing.

The Status Update